The Best Intentions
by a starr in photo
Summary: He was the one held captive, but she didn't have it much easier. The mind is a very hostile place to remain for any period of time. Oneshot. Reid/Prentiss.


A/N: Just a little thing I whipped up. This is the last of the fluffy fics for a bit, I believe. I'll keep posting one-shots, probably rated T or M, so enjoy. Reviews would be lovely!

Disclaimer: Blah Blah Blah. No copyright infringement intended. I'm not getting paid to do this, the dollar signs stifle creativity anyway. (Ask my editor, dangling dollar signs does not make me write faster.)

* * *

She hadn't been a part of the team then, not really. She had been accepted into their work relationships, but she wasn't part of the family, and honestly at that point Emily wasn't certain that she ever would be. It was all too easy to see how they fit together, Daddy Hotch, Mommy JJ, Brothers Morgan and Reid, Sister Garcia, wise Uncle Gideon. There hadn't been room for her, like the foster child they took in out of pity.

But still, when she looked at Reid, it was different. Emily couldn't help but feel as though he knew exactly what she was thinking, he wasn't profiling, he had been there, and something about that drew her to him. She had gotten what she needed out of Gideon and Hotch, they accepted her as a profiler, they were confident in her abilities, but Reid? She wanted Reid to like her, and she wasn't sure how to go about that.

Watching him on the screen had tested her compartmentalization more than anything had before. The feelings she suppressed were screaming, pounding on the boxes to be let out. But she had to contain herself; she didn't know them long, she couldn't show any sort of emotional attachment beyond sympathy for a coworker. She couldn't let them know that each strike they watched was resounding painfully in herself.

She couldn't let them know how badly she wanted to kill Tobias with her own hands, and she couldn't admit to herself that only feeling his soul leave his body would console her, as she watched Reid convulse on the floor, and then stop. And when she saw that he was okay, that he wasn't dead, she had to excuse herself, because years of suppressing emotions made it that much harder to deal with them when they did surface, and she was struggling to keep herself from drowning in them.

She didn't sleep at all until after they had rescued him, though in retrospect he rescued himself. Emily was actually rather surprised that none of the team members noticed that she didn't even try to sleep. Morgan and Garcia, JJ and Gideon, even Hotch had napped, but Emily didn't bother, she knew she'd be plagued by nightmares worse than the one they were living in, and it was just easier to convince herself that she was helping in some small way. For profilers they were pretty unobservant, but the eyes rarely pointed inward, not when they'd be more help focusing outward, to find Reid.

Finding him, though, had been nearly as painful as finding out that he was lost. She had seen him, hovering over Tobias' limp body, and her heart had nearly broken at the look on his face. Guilt for killing his captor, and it was then that Emily's subconscious realized that she loved him, though her conscious wasn't quite ready to admit it. She had never met a person so sympathetic to the struggles of others, though Tobias and his other personalities had beaten and nearly killed Reid, he understood that it was part of a psychotic break, disillusion. He harbored no hatred for the man who had beaten him, and it was at that point, that Emily realized that Reid was quite possibly a stronger person than Morgan, and Hotch, and Gideon, because he didn't seem capable of hate.

But Reid had stood up, and latched onto Hotch in thanks, and had moved on to JJ and a frown flickered across Emily's face, because she wasn't close enough to him to deserve a hug. Reid had no idea what her mind had been reeling through previously. He didn't know that she desperately needed to touch him, just to make sure that he was real, not a hallucination or a dream. She needed to know that it wasn't some sort of cruel mirage. But she didn't get that reassurance. Nobody knew she needed it.

And then he had hung back, and Emily was sure that he thought nobody noticed. The genius was quite good at sleight of hand, but Emily's perceptive eyes watched him slide the bottles into his pocket. She hoped, prayed for his sake, that he disposed of them, that he crushed the damn thing instead of shooting up, because she was perhaps the only one to notice the marks on his forearm, and from experience, she knew exactly what they were. And that same experience told her that all her hoping and praying wouldn't save him.

"What are you thinking about?" Spencer interrupted her train of thought, sitting down on the worn leather sofa next to her. She curled into his side, seeking warmth as well as comfort, as he preferred the house a good five degrees cooler than Emily liked.

"The day in the graveyard, with Tobias," Emily admitted softly, not knowing how better to reference it. It wasn't the day they saved him, it wasn't the day he killed Tobias. It was just that day in the graveyard.

"What about it?" Spencer asked, visibly tensing. She hated bringing up the still sore topic, but he had asked, and she'd never lie to him. "I don't remember those days too well, everything was sort of hazy."

"Your hazy is what us average people feel on a normal day," Emily grinned slightly, trying to lighten the topic if only slightly. "I was just remembering how worried everyone was, and how relieved I was that we found you in time. I didn't sleep at all when you were with him. I couldn't, I think I probably loved you even then. When we found you all I wanted to do was make sure that you were real, that I could touch you, but we weren't on good terms, and my compartmentalization was failing me," she admitted honestly, and he curled an arm around her shoulder comfortingly.

"I was terrible to you after that," Reid commented guiltily. Each word was burned into his brain, with every ounce of the original malice still attached. "Especially at that homeless shelter. I can hardly believe that it was still me, sometimes, it seems like I was somebody else." Emily just nodded; the entire team had felt that way, like their beloved Doctor Reid was gone.

"I saw you take the bottles," Emily finally confessed, hesitance all over her face, and Spencer stiffened again, more noticeably. "I wanted to do something, say something but I didn't. I went home and hoped that you'd go back to your apartment and dump the things down the drain. You seemed so much stronger than me. I'm not sure if I was lying to myself or I actually thought you could do it." She bit her lip nervously. "I'm sorry." She added as an afterthought, she didn't clarify what she was sorry for, she didn't need to, he knew.

"Everybody knew, eventually at least. You were the only one who did something about it. It's not your fault Emmy," he responded, pressing a kiss into her dark hair. "I owe everything to you."

Emily just smiled up at him, at her family.


End file.
